Name: The Last One
ISBN: 9781101965085

Alexandra Oliva

"She wanted an adventure. She never imagined it would go this far. It begins with a reality TV show. Twelve contestants are sent into the woods to face challenges that will test the limits of their endurance. While they are out there, something terrible happens--but how widespread is the destruction, and has it occurred naturally or is it man-made? Cut off from society, the contestants know nothing of it. When one of them--a young woman the show's producers call Zoo--stumbles across the devastation, she can imagine only that it is part of the game"--Provided by publisher.

The Last One

rumbledethumps

If you've ever watched a reality-TV competition show like The Amazing Race or Alone, you'll understand and appreciate what the author has done here. A woman on a reality-TV survival show still believes she is on the show as the world collapses around her. But the writing is so skillful that we're never sure if she really believes she is on the show or just continuing in a state of denial. Unlike any book I've read recently, and I zipped through it in two sittings.

Kelsey Lynn

I received this through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

2.5/5
 The Last One by Alexandra Oliva is a book I wanted to love. It had an amazing concept that was unfortunately marred by it's underwhelming execution and need for a good editor. Some of the writing shows that the author is capable of solid writing, however the writing in this book is inconsistent in it's quality, it's character execution and it's plot.

First and formost this I wouldn't call this book Dystopian, in definition it fits one minor part of what dystopian is (a bad, environmentally declined world) but Dystopian is an opposite of Utopian and has been defined in literature as more of a broken political system, society etc. So it can be argued that it's dystopian, but when compared to dystopian literature... It's not really. So if you're wanting to read a dystopian this isn't it. 

Now lets talk about this awesome concept the author has presented. The idea is that our main character is part of a survival reality show, with some psychological twists. While in the woods filming this show an actual pandemic strikes the world and our main character doesn't know, and is unsure of where her survival challenge ends and reality begins. She travels on what she thinks is her challenge while thinking all the death she is passing is just part of the show, just props. The author attempts to make this book more introspective, quiet, the main character reflecting on her life as she travels. Super solid concept, such a good concept. I was very excited.

The book was a quick read, and the solid concept carried the underwhelming execution for about 80% of the book. Unfortunately around that point the execution of the plot failed itself, giving the book no more legs to stand on. The book is written in a every other chapter style. Every other chapter is set in the present, and every other chapter is set in the past during the earlier filming of the show. The whole plot need, no required, that the events of the reality show would be psychologically damaging or stressful enough to make the main character think the destroyed world around her wasn't real, but part of the show. All that was needed was for the show to mess with them psychologically, have more fake bodies, have more twists, make it dark. Really mess with our character to make her blind to whats around her. Because of the way the chapters were laid out, we had an entire book to find out how much the reality messed with them to make her so messed up. The problem is we converged in our two stories around 80% in, and the show was NEVER intense enough to warrant her response. The show had challenges that look like baby challenges compared to even the Biggest Loser. No challenge (even one involving a dead body prop) happened and not enough time was spent on the show (3 episodes) to warrant how psychologically blinded you would have to be to think the show was going hard core with this pandemic thing. So, the whole book fell apart. The character became just a crazy person with no justification for why she was thinking the way she was and without any kind of logical reason for the actions that were taken. This was also coupled with inconsistency in her character, she got extremely hardened as if she'd been surviving for months, she lies about her name to a person for what reason? She thinks she's still on the show so the audience knows her name, why lie to what she thinks is a cameraman? She has an illogical fall from sanity and it hurt the book.

On top of this the writing was inconsistent, there were sentences or even full passages that were very well written, but they were just kind of fit into the book in sections that they didn't exactly work with or were simply less well written than them. I could almost see the notebook somewhere of one liners and paragraphs the writer was really proud of and made fit in the book, but were wrote separately. When the writing was poor, it was pretty dang poor, at first I thought all the racial descriptors were part of the plot, a statement of how we watch reality shows (asian chick, black doctor) and I think part of it was. But then as the book progressed It started to seem like the author didn't know how describe people beyond White or Black. I've read books where race is never written as Black and White (sometimes never mentioned at all), a clean way of doing this is actually describing the skin tone, we aren't just black, white, asian, we're olive, caramel, dark, light, creamy, there are much better descriptors. The author would write passages that were supposed to be deep and then ruined by the use of "the black boy next to the white woman". It just came off amateurish. 

My final problem is something that I personally think ruins books. I've mentioned it a few times in other reviews cause I'm seeing it a lot with debut authors and I really think their editors need to fix it. Authors need to think about the staying power of their books. They need to think about how it will be received by people in the future. Unless they don't care if their book is forgotten about in a year. Nothing immediately dates a book like using brand names of things relevant now. You never need to say PetFinder in a book, say "they searched for a pet", or even "they searched pet sites on the web". Use generic terms. Don't say Cliff bars, Luna bars, etc, say brand name meal bars, or sponsored meal bars. In 20 years, if these brands aren't around people are going to either date this book, or not know what you're talking about. It's not needed, it's never needed. The worst in this book is that Reddit is referenced a lot while not named (which is fine) the problem is when she drops a Reddit term, AMA, even now there are people who don't know what an AMA is, and in the future if Reddit isn't around no one will know what she's talking about. It's silly I know, but it's become a book ruiner for me. As a lover of old books, and having read many that could have been written now but were written in the 60s or earlier, it makes me sad to see books that shoot themselves in the foot over such easily avoided things. If generic terms are used, people will "insert relevant modern version here" every time, rather than going "Wtf is a Luna bar, I guess it's like 'insert modern version here'" It's a break in reading that just can be avoided.
Sorry, haha, end of that rant.

It had a lot of flaws, but a crazy good concept, I hope she considers editing it, a lot of it's flaws could be fixed with two more chapters of more intense reality show to warrant the characters actions, better use of descriptors and removal of direct references to brands and things that may be relevant now but not in the future. Books don't have to be perfectly written to be good (look at Crichton!), but they need to have staying power and plots that work. She's got the concept, and very little effort could make this book great. Unfortunately as is, I was disappointed.

Lauren Attaway

This book took a little longer than I would have preferred to pull me in. I would give it a maybe read, but perhaps I would have enjoyed it more in a book club, or as a recommendation so that I had someone else to work out my feelings with.

Virginia Su

Jacklyn O’Brien 

This was quite a unique take on apocalyptic novels. I enjoyed how the character's didn't have names (Zoo), to show how impersonal tv made them. The reality tv portion was more entertaining than when she discovers it's not just a game (which, btw took her FOREVER - like open your eyes woman!) Her ignorance to reality kept me reading on, since I wanted to see her reaction when she does. Once that happens, it gets pretty standard apocalyptic, but still a good read!

Leafling

[3.5]

I love reality TV. I love it. So obviously when I read the synopsis of debut novel, The Last One, I had no choice but to read it. And it didn't hurt that it was compared to Station Eleven. Zoo joins a show called In The Dark, which offers a million dollar prize to whoever wins. And how do you win? You have to be the last person standing. The only way contestants are disqualified are if they say the phrase "ad tenebras dedi" and opt to quit themselves. None of them have any idea what the show has in store for them.

The book jumps between different perspectives every chapter, which I generally find fun to read, as I did here. Sometimes we have Zoo, our main character's perspective starting mid-show in the midst of the solo challenge. Then we'll have the editor's perspective, which is pretty much just an omniscient look at the show, with some minor Zoo-bias because he seems to favor her, that starts from the beginning of filming. And every once in a while we get to see some Reddit-like comments about the show's episodes. What the viewers find interesting about the show is that it's almost aired live. Episodes air around a week after the events take place. And the show has an ENORMOUS budget. The contestants do all sorts of interesting, staged challenges, but they've always been pretty overtly staged. Once the solo challenge begins, Zoo is able to justify being alone for so long and having so much territory to hike without seeing anybody because this is where the big budget must have gone. Right?

This novel is about both the lengths a person will go to to survive, and the lengths they'll go to to delude themselves. To try to justify their choices to themselves. And it's especially interesting to look at that in the context of a reality TV show, where everything can be justified because it's part of "the game." That's the trap Zoo falls into as things get worse and worse for her. Attacked by a rabid animal? It must have been a challenge, what does the producer expect her to do? How would the audience expect her to behave? Meet a random guy who talks about a sickness that killed his whole neighborhood? Maybe he's an actor or the cameraman, so she has to act a certain way in response to his story. And this pattern of justifying her behavior parallels how she's dealt with some choices in her real life, in the past and very recently.

A little bit of a slow burn, The Last One has a ton of interesting ideas but not really the pacing of a thriller. The challenges aren't quite exciting enough (and for good reason, because it's a super-staged survival show) and Zoo spends a lot of her time alone thinking very repetitive thoughts. I still really wanted to know how it was going to come together, though, and I'm glad I stayed with it. I absolutely raced through the last 100 pages or so as the stakes got higher and some shit went down. The emotional development of Zoo and the slow reveal of her story and her fate had me gasping and tearing up and desperate for more. Many tears were shed at the end, and I'm not going to say what kind they were. You'll have to read and find out if any Latin falls from the mouth of Zoo. And maybe you'll find out what her actual name is too.

Full Review: Outlandish Lit

Maggie

Gem Koeman

Cliff Berman

Bessie Small

Ed Kay

Audrey

Twelve Contestants When Zoo agrees to take part in a new reality TV show, In the Dark, she knows that she will be tested to the limits of her endurance. Beating eleven competitors in a series of survival tasks deep in the forest, living on camera at the extremes of her comfort zone, will be the ultimate challenge before she returns home to start a family. A Game with No End As the contestants are overcome by hunger, injury and psychological breakdown, the mind games, tricks and hazards to which Zoo is subjected grow dark beyond belief. This isn't what she signed up for; the deserted towns and gruesome props, the empty loneliness. Is this a game with end? And what is happening away from the camera's gaze? Discovering the truth will be just the beginning . . . An Altered Reality Translated into over twenty languages, The Last Oneis a gripping, provocative tale of survival - of the fittest, of the best loved, of the relationships that sustain us. It's a searingly modern thriller and a timeless story of a woman's journey home.

Samantha

Kayla Walters

Sara Sotlar

Ian Marchant 

Lisa Merriam

Emily Ortiz

Mandi Jayne

Tanya Sutton

Lynse Butson

Survival is the name of the game as the line blurs between reality TV and reality itself in Alexandra Oliva’s fast-paced novel of suspense. She wanted an adventure. She never imagined it would go this far. It begins with a reality TV show. Twelve contestants are sent into the woods to face challenges that will test the limits of their endurance. While they are out there, something terrible happens—but how widespread is the destruction, and has it occurred naturally or is it man-made? Cut off from society, the contestants know nothing of it. When one of them—a young woman the show’s producers call Zoo—stumbles across the devastation, she can imagine only that it is part of the game. Alone and disoriented, Zoo is heavy with doubt regarding the life—and husband—she left behind, but she refuses to quit. Staggering countless miles across unfamiliar territory, Zoo must summon all her survival skills—and learn new ones as she goes. But as her emotional and physical reserves dwindle, she grasps that the real world might have been altered in terrifying ways—and her ability to parse the charade will be either her triumph or her undoing. Sophisticated and provocative, The Last One is a novel that forces us to confront the role that media plays in our perception of what is real: how readily we cast our judgments, how easily we are manipulated. Praise for The Last One “[Alexandra] Oliva brilliantly scrutinizes the recorded (and heavily revised) narratives we believe, and the last one hundred pages will have the reader constantly guessing just what Zoo is capable of doing to find her way back home.”—Washington Post “A high-concept, high-octane affair . . . The conceit is undoubtedly clever and . . . well executed, but what makes The Last One such a page-turner is Zoo herself: practical, tough-minded and appealing.”—The Guardian “Oliva takes this (possibly) post-apocalyptic setting, grafts on a knowledgeable skewering of the inner workings of reality television and gives us a gripping story of survival. . . . This is the genius of Oliva’s storytelling. . . . [She] makes a stunning debut with this page turner, and becomes a writer to watch.”—Seattle Times “Oliva delivers a pulse-pounding psychological tale of survival. . . . [She] masterfully manipulates her characters and the setting, creating a mash-up of popular TV genres: Survivor meets The Walking Dead.”—Bookpage